Ashland to feature in Boston Design Week

Alison Bosma abosma@wickedlocal.com @AlisonBosma

Monday

Apr 2, 2018 at 8:38 PMApr 2, 2018 at 8:38 PM

ASHLAND – An Ashland business hub will be part of Boston’s Design Week.

“We’re really excited,” United Home Experts marketing lead Kristin Gould said. “It’s a really awesome opportunity for us to engage with the design community, and showcase our work, and even just to share our office space with that community.”

Design Week is a 12-day affair, featuring businesses from across the state. This year includes 70 events, from seminars, to live demonstrations, to showrooms, in addition to a chance to talk to a wide cross-section of home improvement and design professionals.

Events begin Wednesday night. Most are free and open to the public, but many require online registration.

“(The design industry) employs a lot of people in Massachusetts,” Boston Design Week co-producer Tony Fusco said. “It’s a big part of our economy, and it often gets overlooked as just that, as a segment of our economy.”

He hopes the annual week, along with help from popular home design television shows, will change that.

“That’s our goal, is to increase public appreciation and kind of give a platform to this industry,” he said.

The MetroWest Design Center, on Ashland’s Pleasant Street, will be one of five kick-off locations in the eastern part of the state Wednesday night. Three of the opening night locations are in Boston itself, with the fourth in Everett.

The Ashland center is home to more than a dozen businesses, many of which are focused on design or home improvement. The group is housed in a once dilapidated factory, renovated by United Home Experts principal John C. Dudley Jr. His company now takes up a huge section of the ground floor.

“Over a period of time, it has really become a magnet for other design businesses,” Fusco said.

Ten of the businesses in the Pleasant Street complex will participate on opening night. Visitors will be treated to a virtual reality home tour, sit in on seminars about recycling and successful design, and see a demonstration of window washing by Men in Kilts.

Yes, that last company is comprised of people who clean windows in kilts.

At Divine Stoneworks, a stone-cutting robot, “Harris,” will show off on test mode, because actually cutting stone is too loud, business development employee Dakota Lotz said.

“I think it just lets people know what’s out here in MetroWest,” Gould said. “I think a lot of people think they have to go into Boston, when you don’t realize you have this great mix of builders and designers that are based right here in Central Massachusetts.”

April 4 in Ashland will also include a close look at designs and products from the companies in the MetroWest Design Center – from flooring to siding to countertops and more – and allow people a peek inside the extensively renovated building.

“They can see all our beautiful places,” Lotz said.

Lotz will also be one of the speakers at a second event in Ashland April 11 for Boston Design Week. He and two other businesses in the center will host the National Association of the Remodeling Industry’s Eastern Massachusetts chapter networking and marketing seminar. That event costs $25 to attend.

This is the fifth year for Boston Design Week.

Opening night in Ashland runs from 4 p.m. to 8 p.m. at 60 Pleasant St.

Find more information and sign up for events at http://www.bostondesignweek.com/ or see the full Ashland schedule at https://metrowestdesigncenter.com/#event.

Alison Bosma can be reached at 508-626-3957 or abosma@wickedlocal.com. Find her on Twitter at @AlisonBosma.